Three years into studying History at the University Of Edinburgh, singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod was living a relatively normal life. ‘I was putting my foot in every door, trying to get open mics, pub gigs and support slots’ recalls the 22-year-old. When term time ended in 2022, MacLeod’s single ‘17 Again’ started building traction on streaming platforms and radio airwaves. 
‘Things were going really well. I got my first Radio 1 play with that single, a BBC Scotland session and my first playlist on Spotify. These are big landmark moments for a Scottish artist,’ she says. Little did she know, just a few weeks later, her success would reach unfathomable new heights.
MacLeod grew up in the middle of Inverness with her parents (a piano teacher/civil servant and an English teacher). ‘My mum’s musical but my dad . . . not so much. Although he’s in a real Gregorian chant phase at the moment,’ she laughs. ‘He joined a whole ass Gregorian chant choir. Anyway, with my dad being an English teacher, he’s super into theatre and film and obviously literature. That’s definitely something that was instilled upon me. Or instilled in me. Sorry dad.’ 

While playing competitive squash for Scotland and being ‘a massive nerd’ at school, MacLeod was writing original songs from a young age, dreaming of pursuing music in one form or another. ‘I didn’t know what the first steps were. I didn’t know what it entailed. No one is there to tell you that kind of stuff when you’re living in Inverness.’ Paving her own way, MacLeod used Instagram and TikTok to build an online presence alongside gigging. ‘I would post parts of an original song just to have some material on there as a back catalogue, even if it wasn’t reaching anyone. I literally had like 1000 followers,’ she explains. 
It was one such song, posted in August last year, that would change everything. ‘I recorded a video of me singing the chorus of “Complex”, put it in my drafts and posted it a few days later. Then I woke up the next morning and it was already at 150,000 views or something. Not only that, there were all these comments from very famous people.’ Camila Cabello was among the celebrity names to duet ‘Complex’, which had now racked up millions of views. ‘It was just getting crazier and crazier. It was very clear to me that this was life-changing.’ With no manager or team in place to prepare for the onslaught of attention, MacLeod called upon a few close contacts for help. ‘We had to think about getting a PR and lawyers and stuff straight away. Record labels were phoning within the day. The speed of it cannot be overemphasised. The word overnight is no exaggeration.’

After releasing ‘Complex’ in its entirety, MacLeod made it onto the NME 100, was nominated for an Ivor Novello award (alongside Harry Styles and Wet Leg) and got signed to Columbia Records. A year later, MacLeod is living in London, with her final year at uni deferred, and working on new music that she hopes will showcase different facets of her writing and artistry. ‘I don’t write a tonne of piano ballads, which sounds wrong, but having this piano soundscape moment exist was nice. I just wanted to put a full stop on that.’
MacLeod’s latest single ‘Your Ex’ leans more into pop and indie rock; perhaps a sign of what’s to come in a debut album? ‘“Your Ex” is part of something different,’ insists MacLeod, with a wink. ‘I just want to write as though nothing ever happened, but with the benefit of having these extra resources that I now have access to. If I can just write with nothing else in mind, like I did with “Complex”, that’s a win for me.’

Katie Gregson-MacLeod’s new single ‘Your Ex’ is out now on Columbia Records.